From Rough Habit to Molly Bloom – a family’s Doomben legacy continues

Three decades after leaving the Queensland winter carnival stage with yet another win against the odds, the legacy of Rough Habit lives on.

Unfashionably bred and described as unappealing to the eye, Rough Habit more than made up for those inadequacies with a lion-hearted approach to racing.

“I thought, ‘I’ve got to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear’,” master trainer John Wheeler once said as he reflected on Rough Habit’s career.

Wheeler asked, and Rough Habit delivered to win 29 races and almost $3.9 million in an era when weight-for-age stars were in abundance in Australian racing.

He travelled the globe, racing in two Japan Cups as well as the Hollywood Gold Cup in America.

But it was Queensland where Rough Habit made his name.

In a career that netted 11 Group wins in Australia and New Zealand, six of them came in Brisbane – a Queensland Derby, two Stradbroke Handicaps and three Doomben Cups.

Past his best when Wheeler decided the 1995 PJ O’Shea Stakes would be his stable warrior’s final Australian start, Rough Habit rallied in a farewell for the ages.

And recollections of his fabled winter carnival deeds will be vivid on two fronts during the Doomben Cup meeting on Saturday.

Not only will the French import Huetor be trying to match Rough Habit for three successive Doomben Cup victories, but a member of his family will be doing her best to enrich the family name.

New Zealand-trained filly Molly Bloom, with a racing style not unlike her famous ancestor, will be out to validate her claims as a legitimate Queensland Oaks chance when she contests the Doomben Roses.

It is 24 years since Rough Habit made his Australian debut with a brave second to Stylish Century in the Doomben Classic. He would go on the following month to claim his first Group 1 in the Queensland Derby at Eagle Farm.

Already a Group 1 winner, Molly Bloom is a great-granddaughter of Danish Habit, a Danehill mare who is a half-sister to Rough Habit.

She is the latest member of a family that has risen from humble beginnings.

Rough Habit’s dam Certain Habit had her racing career cut short because of injury and his sire Roughcast was a nondescript American stallion who stood a season in Texas before ending up in New Zealand.

But Certain Habit has left her mark as a broodmare, producing six individual winners from 11 foals while establishing a foundation that wasn’t lost on breeder Isabell Roddick.

‘Certain Habit looks like creating her own little dynasty which is quite remarkable given that she has a very average pedigree and was only ever mated to middle-of-the-road stallions for most of her career at stud,’ Roddick said at the time of the mare’s death in 2004.

Scott Eagleton, who runs the Waikato agistment farm Seaton Park in the heart of prime New Zealand thoroughbred territory, is a latecomer to the Certain Habit story but he is getting results as the breeder of Molly Bloom.

Eagleton owns Molly Bloom’s dam Dancilla, paying “two-thirds of bugger all” for the mare from clients who were scaling back their breeding interests.

“I foaled Dancilla, she was a cracking filly. When she came back to the farm after she finished racing I did a deal with her owners Alan and Colleen Jackson who were among my first clients when I set up Seaton Park,” Eagleton told The Straight.

Eagleton is also heavily invested in Molly Bloom’s sire Ace High as a shareholder but his days trying to make it commercially as a breeder are over.

“I only breed from three mares a year now. I worked out during the global financial crisis in 2008 that there was more money in agistment than breeding,” he said.

That’s why he was overjoyed with the $NZ150,000 Molly Bloom made as a Karaka yearling in 2021.

Eagleton has retained a sister to Molly Bloom to race after bringing her home from Karaka in 2022 and Dancilla is in now foal to Contributer.

He remembers Rough Habit fondly as a blue-collar racing hero.

“A great horse. Only a little battler trained in the Taranaki (region) and not out of the Waikato,” Eagleton recalled.

Rough Habit’s win in the 1992 Stradbroke Handicap is considered one of the most remarkable Group 1 victories of his era.

Giving weight and a seemingly impossible start to his rivals from a wide barrier, Rough Habit weaved his way through the field under Jim Cassidy to beat Barossa Boy.

Molly Bloom has done it similarly, winning four races from nine starts, the most important of which was her Group 1 success in the New Zealand 1000 Guineas.

Huetor is also likely to find himself conceding ground to his main rivals in the Doomben Cup.

Trainer Peter Snowden says Huetor is no Rough Habit but the French import might not have to be to put his name alongside one of the great horses of a golden weight-for-age era in Australian racing.